Making Mother Do All The Heavy Lifting

Last weekend Mother had a request for me: She saw that her brokerage form sent over the, uh, stock tax information and she needed help finding all the information on when and for how much the stocks Father sold in 2014 were bought.  An arduous task, so I asked her if she could give me a week.

That was a damn mistake.  I haven't had time to do it, what with work, coming home, doing chores, being so tired I went to sleep, blogging, preparing for this alumni event, etc.  Moreover, I overlooked the obvious fact that Mother is retired.  I don't have time to do it, but she sure does.  And while she isn't an accountant, she is thorough and dogged, and thus able to pore through records to find the stocks she needs to look for.  In other words, she should have just done it from the get-go -- and she has, all this week.

I told her she needed to remind me to do it, but honestly, I have been only mouthing that I'm going to do it this week when I know I'm not going to do it at all.  On Monday she mentioned that she started working on it herself, and subconsciously I just thought, "Hey, if she's doing it, I don't have to!" and I kind of checked out after everything I had to do once I got home.  Over the course of the week she asked for the piece of mail with the stock tax information back, and then she probably surmised that she was doing all of the work and by last (Thursday) night she basically said, "Fine, let me do it, you just check my English."

That's all I have time for, assuming Mother wants this all done by Monday.  (She said Monday because she thinks their accountant needs time to look it over or something.)  Maybe in retrospect I shouldn't have said I could do it, because I now feel guilty that I said I was going to help, and even though there are technically 48 hours left until her "deadline" I won't have time to help her at all.  I hope she doesn't feel burdened; after all, I think it's quite apparent that she at least had the time to do everything.  But I said I would and we both know I'm not, and I have this thing tomorrow and I have to go to the auto show on Sunday, and I'm going out Saturday night ... you know?

I'll just assume she did a good job and hope this all blows over.